Now Here Was Something To Do
by GoldenGait
Summary: Set after 2x11 Powerless. Sylar finds a power he is unable to take. OC fic.
1. Chapter 1

"Now Here Was Something To Do"

By GoldenGait

Disclaimer: Heroes and everything connected to it belongs to people other than me. Vera's mine, but she plays well with others and I rent her out. For a fee. ;-)

Author's Note: This idea came to me after I got beaned in the back of the head by something I didn't see coming because like most people, my eyes are in the front.

Takes place after 2x11 Powerless.

Part 1

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Sylar sat for a long time in the alley, the empty spinach can still gripped in his hand. The sun began to set, and still he sat, quiet and contemplative. He had no immediate plans, no pressing engagements, and taking a moment to sit and run through his newly returned powers seemed like the right thing to do. He froze the can, he heated the can. He melted the can, and it ran in streams through his fingers and splashed to the ground. He listened to the sounds of the city around him, noisy and constant.

With a crash, a door to Sylar's right flew open and a girl stumbled out. Harsh music followed her until the door swung closed, dulling the noise. She put one hand out to steady herself against the dirty building and after a moment she seemed to get her bearings. She pushed off and walked slowly and deliberately away from Sylar in the direction of the brightly lit street beyond, wiping her hands on her torn jeans.

She'd only made it a few unsteady steps before the door swung open again with a metallic clang and another burst of noisy music. A man emerged and called out to the girl. "Hey, precious, where you going? I thought we were getting along great?"

"Leave me alone," the girl mumbled, not turning around.

"Y'know it's not nice to string a guy along—you know you ran my tab up over a hundred bucks with those drinks I bought you? And now you think you're leaving?"

Sylar watched as the man approached the girl. She stopped and regarded him with an annoyed and slightly bored look on her face.

"Listen, do yourself a favor and go home," she said, brushing her dark hair back from her eyes and wobbling a bit. "I'm so not in the mood for this."

"I don't care what you're in the mood for, honey," the man said and took a few more steps toward her.

"Fine. Your choice." She took a deep breath, and with a shudder, a pulse seemed to run through her whole body, and she seemed to disappear and reappear in the same second, shifted forward a few inches. Sylar would have missed it had he blinked. It was as if she had jumped forward so fast it was impossible to catch the motion. As it happened, the air around her seemed to ripple and discolor slightly.

The disruption sent her attacker flying backwards into the side of the building so hard Sylar was sure he heard something break. The man landed in an ungainly tangle of limbs in a pile of trash bags that had overflowed from a nearby dumpster and didn't move.

Sylar looked back toward the girl, only to find she was already halfway down the alley, still stumbling, and if possible, looking more annoyed than before.

Sylar stood slowly. Now _here_ was something to do.

Sylar followed the girl at a distance for a few blocks before she began digging through her pockets for her keys, and eventually she maneuvered her way up a short flight of stairs to an apartment door. As she let herself in and the door began to swing closed behind her, Sylar moved two fingers and sent a discarded newspaper to wedge the door open. He crept up the stairs after her and eased silently through the door, making sure it clicked closed this time. As he moved quickly up the stairs, he could hear her perfectly, her keys working in a lock accompanied by slurred curses. Suddenly the scraping of keys stopped, and there was a dull thud on the landing directly above Sylar. He took the rest of the stairs two at a time and found himself staring down at the girl, slumped against a door with a set of keys dangling from one hand. Her dark make-up was smudged and she reeked of alcohol.

Sylar smiled at how easy this was going to be. He lifted the keys from her hand and the second one he tried swung the door open to reveal a small, cluttered apartment. The girl slid to the ground with a soft groan as the door opened, and Sylar reached down to grab her. With hands under her arms, he dragged her into the dark apartment. The door swung closed without being touched.

Sylar placed the girl on her sofa and took a moment to look around the apartment. There was a small bedroom to his right, and otherwise the space seemed to consist of one room, with a make-shift kitchen along one wall and too much furniture in the middle. There was a broken coffee table, an old couch, countless bookshelves, and over everything lay piles of papers and clothing. There was a musty smell from too many dishes in the sink, and an over-exuberant radiator in the corner made the whole place so warm it was stifling.

Sylar turned his attention back to the girl. Lifting one hand, he extended his finger toward her head.

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Gotta make you wanna read more! Read, review, rinse, repeat…

GG


	2. Chapter 2

"Now Here Was Something To Do"

By GoldenGait

Disclaimer: Heroes and everything connected to it belongs to people other than me. Vera's mine, but she plays well with others and I rent her out. For a fee. ;-)

Author's Note: Hope you guys are still interested… I'm not usually a fan of other characters being written in to fanfics, mostly because the new characters are almost always an overenthusiastic fan attempting to write themselves in to the universe. For the record, this was not my intent with Vera, and while I prefer to stick to existing characters, this chick just would not leave me alone until I started typing her out. She's hijacked my life. And I think she finds it amusing.

Takes place after 2x11 Powerless.

Part 2

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Vera woke up to a splitting headache. She sat up and a wave of nausea washed over her and she groaned, squinting in the bright sunlight pouring through her dingy window. Her personal opinion was that her alarm clock had obviously been designed to make any normal person want to destroy it with a baseball bat immediately upon waking (hence its effectiveness), and this morning was no exception: the thing was making its usual racket in the next room. She pushed herself off the couch and made her way slowly into her bedroom to turn it off. Eight a.m.

Vera crossed her small bedroom into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She leaned against the sink as she waited for the hot water and tried without success to remember her walk home the night before. The last thing she remembered was attempting to ditch the guy she'd been pumping for drinks all night.

After a long shower that officially put Vera ten minutes behind schedule, she finally turned the water off and got dressed. Pulling her wet hair back into a messy ponytail, Vera walked back into the main room of the apartment. She stopped short upon finding a man lying unconscious in a heap against her kitchen cabinets.

"Fabulous," Vera said unemotionally. She grabbed a pot crusted with yesterday's macaroni and-cheese from the sink and filled it with water. She dumped it unceremoniously over the man's head.

Sylar woke with a gasp as the cold water hit his face and soaked his clothes. He pushed himself to a sitting position against the cabinet doors and sat breathing heavily for a moment before looking around in an attempt to get his bearings. Vera flashed a fake smile at him. "Morning, sweetheart." Throwing the pot back in the sink with a crash, Vera reached for a box of granola. Grabbing a handful, she shoved it in her mouth and put the box back. She looked down at Sylar expectantly, but he said nothing. "Okay, lover boy, I'm not sure what happened last night, but for you to still be out this morning you must have tried to do something _really _naughty to me, and I don't particularly appreciate that." To emphasize her point, she jabbed him with one foot. "So, hope you learned your lesson, yada yada, you can go home now."

Vera turned and strode back to her room in search of her shoes.

Sylar got to his feet, completely bewildered by the situation. He remembered following the girl home last night, and he remembered trying to take her power… It was the events after that he was having trouble filling in. _No matter_, he thought. He followed Vera into her room and with a gesture and an evil smile sent a large ugly vase at her head.

Vera's body gave a twitch and the vase seemed to bounce off the air behind her and landed noiselessly on the unmade bed. Vera straightened up and turned to face Sylar, a pissed off look on her face. "Excuse me?" she asked. "Are you serious?"

The failed attempt gave Sylar a moment's pause. "You have a wonderful ability. How exactly does it work?" Sylar asked, crossing his arms.

Vera shifted her weight and mimicked Sylar's position with her arms. They stood for a moment, mirror images of each other on opposite sides of the room.

"I'm my own personal bodyguard," Vera finally answered. "I don't have to be looking at you, I don't have to be paying attention, I don't even have to be conscious, which is a good thing, considering whatever you tried to do to me last night." Vera paused. "Asshole," she added, raising one eyebrow. She nodded in the direction of the vase, lying nestled harmlessly in her blankets. "You weren't anywhere near that when it came at me. You can do something, too, can't you? You're like me?" she asked with a curious look.

Sylar smiled. "I can do lots of things," he said His hand moved at his side and a large book behind Vera flew off of a shelf at her. Her body gave another slight twitch and the book crashed into her bedstand, knocking a glass of water to the floor.

Vera looked at Sylar as if she couldn't believe he'd just tried again. "What are you, slow? You need to work on your listening skills. And clean that up. I have to brush my teeth and get to work. I don't have time for this." She spun around and stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Vera stood at the sink and grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste. Her head was still killing her, but she didn't flinch when the door behind her was wrenched off its hinges and yanked backwards into her bedroom. She removed the toothbrush from her mouth briefly and put her other hand on her hip. Meeting Sylar's eyes in the mirror's reflection in front of her, she said, "You're going to need to fix that or pay for it."

With a gesture, Sylar sent a letter opener from Vera's desk flying toward her, but her body gave a jerk and it ricocheted harmlessly into the shower curtain. "Stop it," she mumbled around her toothbrush, opening the medicine cabinet in front of her to search for some aspirin. Her body jerked again, and another object hit the floor behind her with a dull thud. "Stop it," she repeated. She found the bottle she'd been looking for and swung the mirror back into place just as she jerked again, causing her toothbrush to ram into the top of her mouth, and there was a smash behind her. Turning to face Sylar, she could see he had sent a lamp at her, but it had been bounced back and shattered against the tile wall of her bathroom.

"Stop breaking my stuff!" Vera said loudly, pointing the toothbrush at Sylar for emphasis. She turned back to the sink and spat, cupping water in her hands to rinse with. She felt the familiar jolt run again through her body and one of her father's bookends smashed into the wall to her left, taking a few tiles down with it.

Spinning around, Vera walked to the now door-less doorway. Sylar stood in the middle of her room, a menacing but frustrated look on his face. Vera paused for a moment before she leaned forward and forced a strong pulse through her whole body, seeming to skip a few inches forward in space as she did so. "I said, _stop it_!" The force knocked Sylar back across the room and he disappeared out of sight behind Vera's bed. "God, you're annoying," she told his unconscious form as she zipped up her sweatshirt, found her shoes and stuffed her feet into them, and grabbed her keys. "I guess I'll see you tonight," she called over her shoulder as she walked out the front door.

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Holidays are over, people, time to get back to work… Not sure when the next segment of this baby will be up, but there will definitely be more. I'm having fun. R&R please!

GG


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